Chhattisgarh: officers mourn, keep up the hope

Homemaker Kushi Siddiqui is proud of her husband Nazar Siddiqui’s accomplishments battling Maoists in their den — northern Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. But she gets tense every time his mobile phone is unreachable.

In the forests around Pakhanjur police station that Nazar heads, cell phones often go out of range. “I trust God to keep him safe,” the Raigarh-based Kushi, 28, says, hoping her husband would be rewarded for spending eight years in a battle zone.

Mool Chand Dubey of Bhilai advised his constable son Mani Shanker to give his career a rethink after his abduction by Maoists in 2011.

“I wish he had an option,” the father says. Shanti, wife of constable Bal Singh Baghel, who was injured in the May 25 attack on a Congress convoy in Bastar, too dreads the possibility of her husband being sent to the Maoist zone after recovery.

In Bhopal, Narsa Devi sees no point in being anxious for her husband Vikram Atharia, 40, a member of the elite Hawk Force “Someone has to do the job, and it is satisfying that he is serving the nation,” she says.

Varanasi-based Aradhana agrees. “There’s turbulence inside, but we try to put up a brave face,” she says, declining to name her CRPF officer husband posted in Sonbhadra, Chandauli and Mirzapur districts of Uttar Pradesh.

IPS officer Sunil Joshi of Sikar, Rajasthan, is posted in Odisha. Like others working across the Red Corridor, he gets 60% more pay. “But money is not everything,” a family member says.